The present invention generally relates to an apparatus and method for shredding and crushing refuse and then baling the crushed material. More specifically, the present invention relates to a mobile apparatus that receives a high volume of material, such as tree branches, trash, demolition materials from a roll-off container, or the like, shreds and/or crushes the material into smaller debris, compresses the debris into a bale, and then wraps the bale with material to hold the bale together for transport and storage purposes. The apparatus may be portable so that it can be moved from one site to another and allows for a variety of materials (i.e. wood, metal, plastic, etc.) to be shredded and baled together at one time without the need for separation or sorting of materials.
A shredder or crusher typically has rotating blades which shred and shear material as it is fed into the shredding apparatus, and the shredded material may then be collected in a receptacle that may b located underneath or in proximity to the shredder. Usually shredders are designed to handle a specific type of material, such as plastics, wood, or paper. The object of a shredder is to reduce materials to a much smaller size for recycling or disposal, as shredded material occupies much less space than non-shredded, intact material.
A drawback to typical shredders is the fact that, although the material is reduced in size, the smaller, loose material is harder to collect and contain when transporting and/or disposing. Additionally, typical shredders tend to include a plurality of rotating cutting mechanisms as well as a screening apparatus to ensure that only small sized debris is released from the shredder; any larger sized debris may make additional passes through the shredding mechanism until it is shredded to a much reduced size. It would b advantageous to provide an apparatus that is simplified to a single shredding or cutting mechanism, and whereby the resulting size of the shredded debris need not be screened to a uniform size. Furthermore, it would be advantageous to provide an apparatus that can subsequently bale the loose material after shredding, such that the smaller, loose material is compacted into a bale that can be much more easily transported. In addition, the baling process itself serves to compact the material and reduce the size of space occupied by the garbage or recyclable material.
A baler is apiece of farm machinery used to compress a cut and raked crop (such as hay, cotton, straw, or silage) into compact bales that are easy to handle, transport, and store. Several different types of balers are commonly used, each producing a different type of bale—rectangular or cylindrical, of various sizes, bound with twine, strapping, netting, or wire. Industrial balers are also used in material recycling facilities, primarily for baling metal, plastic, or paper for transport.
The most common type of bale industrialized countries today is the large round baler. It produces cylinder-shaped “round” or “rolled” bales. The design has a “thatched roof” effect that withstands weather well. Grass is rolled up inside the baler using rubberized belts, fixed rollers, or a combination of the two. When the bale reaches a predetermined size, either netting or twine is wrapped around it to hold its shape. The back of the baler swings open, and the bale is discharged. The bales are complete at this stage, but they may also be wrapped in plastic sheeting by a bale wrapper, either to keep hay dry when stored outside or convert damp grass into silage.
Heretofore, baling was primarily used in connection with hay, cotton, straw, or other types of fibrous materials. It has been contemplated that baling other types of materials, such as dirt, mulch, and household garbage, for instance, would be beneficial, because those materials could be compressed into much smaller units that would occupy significantly smaller volumes than the loose materials that remain uncompressed. One problem, however, with baling dirt and mulch (for example), is the difficulty in compressing that material to form into a bale, and then ensuring that the bale would remain intact, rather than simply falling apart. Hay, cotton, and straw bales tend to remain intact after the baling operation has been completed, largely due to the length and fibrous nature of those materials. Dirt and mulch, which includes much smaller particulate, would simply crumble out of the sides of the bale during the baling process, and thus, balers for these types of materials have never been successfully manufactured and commercialized.
Several patents and publications, incorporated herein by reference, describe a variety of shredding and baling or compacting mechanisms. U.S. Pat. No. 5,052,170 describes a shredder attachment for a round bale hay baler which will effectively shred corn stalks or stubble, milo stubble and the like and discharge the shredded stubble into a round bale hay baler which will form a bale of stubble which has been shredded which can be used for feed, bedding and the like.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,491,245 describes a mobile shredding and material handling and feed system, preferably for use in the handling and shredding of paper and other office related feedstock. An embodiment of the system on the input side utilizes an in) hopper, a first conveyor, a feed aperture, and a second conveyor which moves excess feedstock away from the entry to the shredder feed aperture to avoid jamming the feed aperture. An embodiment of the invention on the output side utilizes a compactor, preferably one or more augers, to compact the shredded material exiting the shredder, and moving said compacted shredded material to the discharge or system output. An embodiment of this material handling and feed system also applies for balers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,499,931 describes a vehicle for collecting, sorting and reducing the volume of recyclable wastes and regular household and commercial garbage includes a large container with plural compartments mounted to the exterior of the vehicle includes a lifting mechanism for lifting the container to the top of the vehicle so that its contents can be dropped through chutes into plural bins. Between the chutes and the bins are crushers and shredders for reducing of volume of wastes deposited in the bins. Other wastes are placed in balers for baling.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,820,542 describes an apparatus for compacting and baling leaves, grass clippings, sticks, pine straw and other debris on lawns, yards, or fields is provided. The apparatus may have diagonal brushes to gather debris for processing though a crusher, a conveyor belt to transport the crushed debris, and a baler to compact and bale the debris. The baler may compact the debris by rotating the debris in a continuous band, into which baling material may be inserted to bale the debris. Alternatively, the debris may be gathered and feed into a crusher that deposits the crushed debris directly into the baler for compacting and baling. Further still, the apparatus may gather the debris with brushes and feed it onto a conveyor mechanism 30 that then introduces it into a crusher. The crushed debris may then be teed into a baling mechanism that compacts and bales the debris for easy removal and disposal. In its various embodiments, the present invention may be connected to a prime mover or alternatively connected to a portable base with a motor for driving the device.
The shredders and balers of the prior art suffer from disadvantages such as only being able to shred and bale a particular type of material, the design of the shredding apparatus is more complicated and therefore more expensive, and/or the shredding and baling apparatus is only capable of small scale jobs (i.e. shredding and baling twigs and leaves while being pushed around a lawn).
It would be particularly advantageous to provide an industrial sized shredder and baler method and apparatus for shredding and baling multiple types of materials at one time, and particularly non-fibrous materials that have, heretofore, been difficult shred and form into bales. The advantages of shredding and baling these and other materials include the ability to transport the bales, stack the bales for efficient storage, and compressing the materials into a volume that is much smaller than the volume of the unshredded and/or uncompressed material. Wood can be shredded and baled for biomass; and, much larger quantities of garbage, wood, and demolition materials can be transported for disposal at a single time or on a single vehicle as compared to previous methods.
The shredder-baler may be mounted on a trailer or flatbed whereby the shredded material may transported to the baler via conveyer, allowing for a portable system that can be scaled up or down in size and driven anywhere shredding and baling is needed. One useful technique would be to drive a single shredder-baler to a demolition or disaster site for quick and efficient clean up. For example, rather than needing ten to twenty roll-off container trucks lined up to collect and contain debris and materials, a single shredder-baler may be driven onsite along with a flatbed truck to collect and stack the bales. Potentially, a single flatbed truck could hold 15-20 roll-off containers worth of baled debris.
Another useful technique would be to use the shredding and baling combination apparatus on a trash or refuse collecting truck in order to compress and bale household or commercial trash. In such an arrangement, the trash workers could load trash directly into a hopper or feeder for the shredder for shredding and subsequent compression and baling. When the bale reaches capacity and is released from the baler, the bale of trash could be stacked onto a flatbed of a truck, and additional bales could be stacked on top of one another in a compressed state, which means that such a truck could transport vastly larger quantities of trash than currently available methods allow. When the trash bales are delivered to a landfill, the bales could be neatly stacked, creating a much cleaner appearance, with the added benefit that the bales only occupy appropriately 10% of the volume of uncompressed, loose trash and refuse. Thus, in this way, a landfill having a certain land area could contain as much as ten times the amount of trash dumped there in an uncompressed, loose manner as is typical of landfills in use today.